Indexes of thousands marketing blogs are great for SEO. Make really sticky content. Today we’re going to review five of those indexes and explain how, and why, the sites have created those indexes of thousands of marketing blogs.

Let’s start with I’ve concluded and then I’ll explain why I’ve concluded that. Number one: find the best blogs that you personally enjoy reading. There’s no point creating content that you’re not personally interested in. That’s inauthentic.

Secondly, though edit that list with your audience in mind.

Third, summarize the content and link fully. Don’t steal copy. You’re just summarizing what they said and then you’re linking back to the original site to give them the credit that they deserve.

Optimize the page that you’ve hosted that on for your chosen phrase. If you do reproduce, do so only with permission, full links, and SEO tip, canonical references. I’ll explain that a bit later on in the video.

Build a clear call to action, and then make that call to action. That’s it. Let me now review those blogs and lead up to why reach those conclusions.

Well our first blog that we’re going to review is at HubSpot, and it’s 25 Helpful Sales and Marketing blogs. Now this is not original content, but content that they’ve taken the trouble to curate and put on their site.

Little bit of index, and then a reference, and some specific links to some of the great blogs that they think have been good from each of these bloggers. It is a useful reference source, and they’ve taken the effort to find good content, and to share it. Notice their social sharing here, very smart.

Okay. The next one we’re going to take a look at it is also from HubSpot. Slightly different mode here. Let me get back to the top.

With this page on HubSpot, first two were both HubSpot. What they’ve done is pull across content in full, but the content was originally published elsewhere, and they’ve given full reference to the original content.

Next one is, SalesBlogs, and this is again curated content, and these are a strong list of bloggers that they think you should consider watching, or reading, their material. Thank you sales engine.

Now this SBI blog, Sales Benchmark Index, as best I can tell is original content. They’re posting everyday, and it looks to be pretty high level strategic content, and I think definitely worth a look.

The final one I wanted to show you. It didn’t quite get up in the Google rankings, but it was the most shared, more than any of those other ones. From Jeff Bullas. 13 Essential Content Marketing Tips to Convert Website Traffic into Sales.

Interesting, and a somewhat different, spin. This is now really more for the marketer. Those other ones were largely sales blogs, and it’s a strong argument about why creating content is a viable tactic. There is no doubt that it is a great tactic.

Here you got some good actual tips, and examples, of the types of content that you can pull together. I’d say that’s definitely worth a rate, and I’ll include a link to that in the show notes.

Why have those sites created, and curated, those lists? Very simple answer. It makes great SEO. Slightly they per answer, it also makes copy that people want to link and come back to. Slightly more altruistic answer, because they’re useful.

What does it mean for you? What should you do? How can you take advantage of this? Let me share that with you now.

Let me take this from the perspective of both a consumer and a marketer. As a consumer you want to be really careful about not being inundated with content, reading through goss. The best way to do that is to set up a Feedly list. Feedly is a great way to put all of you blogs in one spot, and then you can cycle every day, maybe for half an hour a day if that’s how much time you can give to rating. You can cycle through and work at which topics to read today, and mark the others as read. Great way to manage your time carefully; that would be a Feedly list. That’s as a consumer.

Let’s now go to as a marketer. There really are, I mentioned this at the top of the video. There really are 3 great benefits of creating curated lists, but the values are all in the curation, make the content great. I’ll give you some specific tips in a moment.

What I wanted to say there though, is any content that you curate, nice lists. Certainly it’s going to be great for SEO purposes. That is bringing new people to the site, but it’s also very sticky content in the sense, that if your list is any good people will bookmark it, and even share it as a list.

If that’s the case, you’re going to get visitors, some of whom are repeat visitors. If that’s the case, what do you actually want them to do? Other than just rate the content.

I know that you’re a great altruistic person, and you’re sharing content for love, but you’ve got to make some money as well.

What is a logical call to action that you can offer on that same page? Build up to it. Organize your content so that it logically leads to a compelling conclusion, and then make that conclusion.

Let me boil that down into 7 quick tips.

Firstly, find great blogs that you personally enjoy. It’s simply inauthentic for you to put up blogs that you don’t personally enjoy.

Secondly, edit that list with your audience in mind. If you enjoy something but it’s kind of off pace. Might be better to keep that for a different list maybe. Have a separate list of really cool stuff that’s off topic, but do it for your audience.

Thirdly, summarize that content, and link fully. We definitely don’t want to be stealing copy. Link properly, and acknowledge the author.

Optimize the page for the chosen phrase.

If you do reproduce, do so with permission, and links to the original source. Here’s a small tip, canonical references. If Google sees duplicated copy on your site, it’s going to mark you down for pinching copy. Particularly if you’ve pinched it from a higher authority site then your own. Best thing to do is acknowledge the original source with what is called a canonical reference. That’s simply a tip of the lid that says, “I’m not the original curator of this content, the original source is over here.”

Very good high hygiene thing to do for Google. If you put canonical references in for your duplicated content Google will respect your original content much more highly. Get your SEO to do that if you’re not sure how to do it.

As marketing values, next to offer you. Build a clear call to action. Organize your content in such a way that it actually builds up to a conclusion. Maybe you’re even inserting comments on the way through. If I’m scrolling through and reading your list, that lead or start to build, a bit of momentum towards the call to action.

Finally, make the call to action. Might be as simple as subscribe. There might be a bigger call to action that you’re making. If you’re going to the effort of curating really search friendly, and bookmarked content. Make sure you’re making a call to action at the end.

That’s it for today, so I hope you really got value out of that. If you haven’t already subscribed, can I invite you to. What the means is that you’ll be the first to hear, or first to know, that there’s new fresh content out. You can subscribe either at align.me/blog or at YouTube.com/alignmeb2b. Depending on your preferred way of consuming this content.

If you have done that already, you’ve probably got a colleague who hasn’t. I’d really be so grateful if you shared this content with others. Finally, if you’ve done both of those things, then can I ask you to let me know what kind content you would like to see covered.

I’m getting some great suggestions from other viewers about topics they would like to see covered. You’ve got a topic that you’d like to see covered as well, I’m happy to do the research, and to produce a blog just for you. If you do one of those things I’ll be super grateful.

Well that is it. I hope you got great value out of today’s show, and I look forward to bringing more to you next week. Until then, may your funnel be full, and always flowing.

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Our thanks this week to: